Cells and organisms such as bacteria or cancer cells live in communities and have complex population-level dynamics and emergent behaviors. These behaviors can significantly change their collective properties, including resistance to drugs and other environmental selective pressures. Predicting how cellular communities, rather than individuals, respond to drug exposure could help delay or prevent drug resistance during treatment.

Spatial structure and heterogeneity are important features of such communities – from the cell to the ecosystem scale.  In my research, I aim to understand the essential, but poorly understood, relationship between spatial structure and population-level dynamics in bacterial biofilm communities responding to antibiotic selection via theoretical and experimental approaches.